


The Honourable Ones

by icarus_chained



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Enemies, Episode Related, Gen, Guilt, Honour, Hope, Introspection, Post-Episode: s02e17 The Honorable Ones, Survival, Survivor Guilt, past genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 04:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10528707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Zeb, in the aftermath of that moon and all that happened there. How are you supposed to feel, after you've saved the man who helped murder your people?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Because I've gone back and rewatched "The Honorable Ones", and also watched "Legends of the Lasat" and a few other things, and it occurred that I haven't yet seen fic dealing with _Zeb's_ feelings after Bahryn. (Though I could have missed it, if it exists please feel free to send it my way). I love enemy mine as a trope, I love it so much, Zeb and Kallus give me all the Valjean/Javert, Londo/G'Kar feels, and it was a hell of a thing Zeb did on that moon. A hell of a thing.

Zeb sat in the gun turret, looking out over the silent depths of space. No moons here, icy or otherwise. No planets. Murdered or otherwise.

How were you supposed to feel, he wondered? How were you supposed to feel after saving your enemy, working with him? The man who'd helped kill your world, massacre your people? How were you supposed to feel, after that?

Though it seemed Kallus hadn't helped it to quite the extent he'd thought. Kallus hadn't ordered it. Hadn't even known, it seemed, not in advance, even if he had followed his orders when it came to it. Like a good little imperial soldier, willing to kill everything in his path. But he hadn't known. He hadn't known Lasan was always meant to be a massacre. He hadn't known what happened to Geonosis either. He hadn't bothered asking.

Did that make it better? Could _anything_ make it better? It wasn't like ignorance was any real defence, not when it was your hand on the trigger. Not when ... when so many people had died. Whole worlds. How was anything supposed to make _that_ go away?

How was anyone supposed to live, after being part of it?

Ah, _karabast_. He didn't know. Did he have any more answers than Kallus, when it came to it? He hadn't known about Onderon, after all. He hadn't known about lasat mercenaries, murdering wounded soldiers on the field. And he did believe Kallus about it. He did believe that had happened. That ... hollowness, in the man's voice. He knew that. He recognised it. He did believe Kallus had seen what he'd seen.

Not that it excused anything. Not that it excused the murder of an entire species. But then, Kallus hadn't ordered that either. He'd been _complicit_ in it, but not responsible. Did that make a difference? And how much of one, if so?

Zeb sighed, leaning back against the headrest, tilting his head back to stare blindly out into the night. His hands curled around the bo-rifle in his lap. Instinct, to keep it close. Instinct, from start to finish. Why hadn't he killed Kallus down there?

Well. Because he _wasn't_ a mercenary, to start with. He was no murderer, to kill a wounded man while he lay helpless. And Kallus had been. Dragged out of that escape pod, lying on ice and snow with his leg broken under him. The man hadn't had a hope of fighting, and he'd known it. Zeb had seen it in him, the knowledge of how helpless he was, even after Zeb had lowered the rifle and elected to leave him alive.

_The injured never had a chance. Always wondered why ... he let me live._

Karabast. No wonder the man had been so terrified. Though he'd been doing his best not to show it. Doing his best to fight, even despite it. There was a part of Zeb that admired that. Even then, even knowing nothing else. There'd always been a part of him that had admired the man's sheer stubborn determination, if absolutely nothing else about him. Whatever else you could say about Kallus, he was a warrior. He was willing to fight and die, all the way down the line. Had been from the very start.

Was that part of it? Was that part of why he hadn't wanted to kill him? Not like that, anyway. Not on the ground, not helpless. Kallus was a _warrior_. He'd gone toe-to-toe with Zeb, and even won a time or two. With a weapon never made for human hands. A weapon ... a weapon he'd won. Fair and square. By the warrior way.

Zeb tried to imagine that. He'd been trying to picture it ever since the man had said it. It had been hard. It had been so hard. None of his previous imaginings of Kallus on Lasan would ever have allowed for it. Boosahn Keeraw. Kallus would have had to get close for that. It couldn't have been orders and ion disruptors from a distance. It couldn't have been a battlefield looted in the aftermath. For that now-dead lasat to have acknowledged Kallus, _personally_ , as worthy of his weapon ...

And Zeb knew Kallus was capable of it. Melee combat, to fight and win up close and personal. The man had never shied away from that, whether against lasats or Jedi or anything else. Zeb had no doubt that he wouldn't have shied from it then either.

_The lasat Guardsman I faced, he ... fought well. Died with honour. He gave me the rifle, before ..._

Died with honour. That was the phrase Zeb kept coming back to. Honour. Not just that lasat Guardsman's. _Kallus'_ honour. Because he had to have had some. Because all the honour in the world wouldn't stop you being torn atom from atom by an ion disruptor. Because Zeb couldn't imagine a lasat, _any_ lasat, lying wounded in the midst of that and seeing some sneering, imperial face above him and _still_ ... still acknowledging it. Still offering up his weapon. Not unless he'd seen something else first. Not unless that imperial had been ...

Not unless that man had been worth acknowledging. Even in the midst of horror. Even on the deathbed of a world.

A warrior. A warrior first and foremost. And the thing was, Zeb wasn't sure that lasat Guardsman had been wrong. Kallus was many things, Kallus was cruel, Kallus was merciless, Kallus was the very face of imperial oppression, but he was _also_ , for all that, a brave man. He always had been. Even an honourable one, when given a chance, though that was a newer feature. Still. Kallus was what he was. A warrior, a _brave_ warrior, fighting for something he believed in.

Or thought he believed in, anyway. _Wanted_ to believe in. Bringing peace and order to a troubled world, he'd said. And before it, _I didn't ask questions_. But he'd known, hadn't he, that they were there to be asked. The way he'd looked away from Zeb, when challenged on the emptiness of Geonosis. He'd known there were questions. He just hadn't wanted to ask them, because asking them would mean facing ...

Facing Lasan. Facing Geonosis. Facing every other world the Empire had destroyed. Facing every world Kallus had been _complicit_ in destroying.

And they were back to that, weren't they? They were back to that. How was any man supposed to live with that? 

And how was anyone supposed to let him?

It might have been different, Zeb thought, if he hadn't known about Lira San before going down there. If he hadn't known there was another world, on which so many of his people still survived. It might have been different if Kallus hadn't broken his leg, if he hadn't been momentarily helpless. It might have been different if Kallus hadn't fought beside him anyway, gotten up on that broken leg and fought off beasts alongside him. If Kallus hadn't told the truth, acknowledged it in return. If Kallus hadn't held his weapon, there at the end, and chosen not to shoot him. If Kallus hadn't saved him. If Kallus hadn't been _willing_ to save him. So many things, so many chances gone astray, and it might have been so different.

But it hadn't. It hadn't been different. They'd done what they'd done, the both of them, and everyone else as well. A lasat mercenary on Onderon had murdered wounded soldiers. Kallus had fought on Lasan, helped in the massacre of a world. And Zeb, in the end, when it came to it, had let him live in spite of that. Zeb had had a chance to kill him, and done his best to save him instead. Zeb had let his enemy live, and then been saved by him in turn.

And now, he supposed, all he had to do was decide how he felt about that.

He looked down, away from the vast emptiness of space, and back to the weapon in his hands. His bo-rifle. The weapon that had kept him alive for all these years. The beacon that had guided him to Lira San. The weapon Kallus had held in his hands, there on that moon, and used to save Zeb instead of kill him. When given a chance. When allowed to live. When reminded what honour looked like. A weapon matched, maybe, by the one left behind with him on that moon, holding together a broken leg, and whatever remnants of honour a brave, cruel man had left.

Because a weapon could be used to protect as much as kill. Because some weapons were made for honour, and designed to be used for nothing less.

So no, he thought, breathing out in satisfaction. No, he didn't regret what had happened down there. He didn't regret letting Kallus live, didn't regret taking the chance to speak with him, didn't regret fighting beside him, saving him and being saved in turn. Whatever else lay between them, whatever else lay before and behind them, he wasn't going to regret that.

Once upon a time, a dying lasat on a dying world had looked up at Kallus and seen honour in him, enough to be worth surrendering a weapon to. Once upon a time on an icy moon, a still living lasat had looked up from the lip of an ice cave, and seen the same thing. 

Enough to let the man live, and not regret it. Enough, maybe, even to hope for more.

_Well_. All right. Maybe not that last one. This was still _Kallus_ , after all. Let's not be getting anyone's hopes up just yet. There was letting the man live, for the sake of the ragged bits of honour he had left, and then there was thinking the man would ever actually _do_ anything about them, beyond the odd moment of grace here or there. Kallus was still Empire, after all, had still walked back into imperial arms. One honest conversation on one icy moon wasn't going to change him as neat as all that.

Still, though. It wasn't anything to regret either. He'd decided that. Whatever happened now, whichever one of them ended up dead for it, Zeb wasn't going to regret that moon or what he'd decided there. As long as someone was still alive, there was still a chance for them. The rebellion had taught him that, Hera and Kanan and everyone on this crew, and it was something he was happy to abide by. It was something he was happy to pass on to someone else.

What was it Kallus had said? Lasats never know how to give up? Yeah. Yeah, that. 

And from this point on, wouldn't Kallus be _glad_ of it.


End file.
